


Vulnerability

by halfaperson



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of the Other Losers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Q slur, Slow Burn, Swearing, Trauma, anyway, doesnt actually happen in the story just a dream, i dont write shit like this often so it's probably bad!! but i love them so, jus 2 boys chillin and cryin, not edited, post p1 canon, pre p2 canon, set in their sophomore year like 89/90 would be the dates of this yr i think, working through trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-01-04 08:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12165699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfaperson/pseuds/halfaperson
Summary: stan finds richie in a rare moment of vulnerability. they talk, for real. shit happens. movie verse because i’m in the middle of the book at the moment and i’m not sure if i know it well enough. set in 1989, obviously. lots and lots of reflection upon themselves, thinking, and silence. needless to say, this is my first IT fic so idk if it's out of character.





	1. Chapter 1

 

the barrens. always there, almost always daunting - if stan was to be honest with himself, he felt as though it was almost the beginning of everything. his life started in those waters and, he thought somewhat hauntingly, it was quite possible his life would end there too.

these were the thoughts none of them talked about, the ones (he was pretty sure) they all had but kept under wraps, some better than others. eddie, for one, was not the best at that, but he was allowed to be… that. vulnerable, or whatever, stan thought flippantly. he knew, somewhere deep inside of him, that his feelings towards eddie’s somewhat more healthy expression of his feelings was not so much based on that but instead on how eddie got to deal with it. or, rather, who eddie got to help him. richie, ever funny, ever (somewhat secretly) kind, was always there for eddie and stan would have to accept that. some day.

he wondered idly about all of this as he approached the cliffside, footsteps as silent as ever and so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the person occupying the space he was heading for until it was almost too late. he would’ve, in fact, marched right up to the ledge he liked best and sat down if not for the quiet sound of breathing, too heavy and laboured to mean anything other than a sobbing Loser. _great_ , he thought, knowing he didn’t have the right to be angry but feeling it anyway, _instead of having some space to work through whatever the Fuck is going on in my brain i’m going to have to comfort bill or ben or maybe eddie, and i’m going to be resenting them the whole time and we’re both going to leave feeling worse. just great._ a voice in the back of his mind that he didn’t want to acknowledge as his own (was it? at this point, he couldn’t even tell) whispered that he could just leave - walk away from there, get back on his bike and find somewhere else to eventually start crying because it was impossible for him to distinguish between platonic and romantic feelings and he just wanted to be _normal for Once,_ for fuck’s sake. but he wouldn’t do that. he would walk over to whoever it was today - it wasn’t mike, he simultaneously knew that mike had the most reason to be breaking down far away from others - he’d dealt with some rough shit, more than they’d known or really realised, which stan hated to think about - and that he would never do that; he didn’t want to have to rely on them, he still feared being an outsider and there was nothing stan wanted to do more than to remedy that but he knew that even trying might push mike further away, so they were caught in a stalemate, neither making the first move because mike hated feeling like a burden and stan hated seeming invasive. it wasn’t richie either, stan thought, it just couldn’t be, and bev had gone already, so it was likely one of the B Boys (though it could be eddie) sobbing on a rock. stan secretly hoped it was bill, because bill was easier to comfort, or “comfort” to the point where he would pretend he was fine, thank you, and make an excuse to leave. meanwhile, one of stan’s favourite things about ben was that he wore his heart on his sleeve - he was so endearingly open and kind which meant that when he was unhappy it was just as clearly written across his face and stan couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to wipe him clean. he knew that he was stupid for thinking he could, naive for thinking that he could fix his friends and they him, but he wanted so much for it to be true that it just… had to be. he didn’t know what he’d do without that constant belief in his life. he would heal and his friends would heal and what had happened would not just be left behind, it would be a permanent mark on their lives, perhaps the most important one, but a scar that had healed over like the ones on all of their hands. in his head, that promise had been his own to them, as well. _i will help you,_ he’d sworn silently _, even if you can’t help me, i will do whatever i can for all of you._ but now beverly was gone and everything was different and recently he’d just been feeling so _helpless._ he just didn’t know what to do and everything inside of him was getting unbearable even if everything outside of him was getting better.

he realised that in the minutes he’d taken to think through all of that, because he tended to do that - go off on mental tangents and forget to exist - the sobbing had gotten more laboured and distressed, though he hadn’t thought that would be possible. so he stepped out from the relative safety of behind the tree he’d been leaning on, hearing the regrettable _crunch_ of his shoes on rock and feeling blinded and shocked for a moment, both by the brightness of the sun and contrast of it to the shade of the forestry and by the boy sitting on the edge of the cliff in front of him. turning towards him, quickly lifting up his glasses and drying his eyes on the back of his hand, was richie tozier in all his annoying nerdy glory, but not quite so. despite that the physical tears had been wiped off of his face, he was still shaking slightly and breathing like sobbing. stan processed all of this in less than a moment, a split second even, and he didn’t know what to do. he stared at the red faced boy in front of him, so blindsided that he was completely silent and still and so was richie, for once. he’d prepared things to say to bill or ben and even eddie but now he was without his plans (“stan without a plan,” he heard richie say in his mind, “shocker”) or his wits, simply looking at the boy in front of him. not knowing what to do, he sat down beside him and put his arm around the taller boy’s shoulders.

stan wasn’t the only one surprised, of course. things had been bad for richie recently - worse than usual, that was - on most occasions he could keep his _everything_ under locks and out of reach; sure it wasn’t the most healthy strategy, but it had worked, up until then. a lot of the strategies he usually used to keep his friends out hadn’t been working recently, he realised with a jolt on his way to the barrens (he’d needed a place to think, and where else was there?). his strategy of _make everything a joke_ , while still reliable, had become somewhat transparent to stan at the very least since the whole debacle with It (he shuddered just thinking about it) - instead of his previous insults back or annoyed skepticism, when richie joked these days stan would look at him with eyes saying “let me help you” and the likes. it was unsettling. stan had seen through a lot of things, he realised - of course, he’d worked his whole life to keep up his reputation of being trashmouth tozier and that disguise was pretty much impenetrable, but little holes had been showing up more and more in that metaphorical mask recently, letting the light shine, little by little, on the terrified boy, unhappy with himself and his life, underneath.

he thought about all of this on the way there and when he arrived, he finally let his mind wander, though it couldn’t quite be considered wandering if you knew straight where it was headed, despite his internal protests. but true to form, give richie tozier five minutes, a pen and paper or a pretty scenery to stare at, his daydreams would always find their way to stanley uris. short and tiny (not as short as eddie, bless the boy, but maybe even tinier - richie worried about that, worried about him, always), with curls that, when framed in just the right light, made him look like he was glowing, and no tolerance for richie’s shit.

despite all that - the seeing through jokes, the daydreams on richie’s part (and unbeknownst to him, on stan’s as well) - stanley was never the person richie would go to for comfort (that was, if richie was ever _to_ go to someone for comfort which god knew was never really going to happen). richie had a lot of shit going on - his mother’s alcoholism (which no one in the group knew about, though he was sure that they all wondered why no one was allowed within 100 feet of his house) and his father’s disinterest in him in general, his frequent and intrusive thoughts and feelings of worthlessness, etc - but this was all shit he didn’t want stan to know about him. as stupid as he was sure it sounded, he wanted stan to think he was stronger, better, more okay, than anyone else, or than he was in reality. he could tell he wasn’t quite so good at convincing him but the worst thing he could possibly do if he ever wanted to even have the smallest chance with the other boy - because he had accepted at this point what he wanted; a chance. of what kind, he wasn’t sure yet - was show vulnerability. if he was to show how all of the shit that pennywise had done had affected him, he was sure that everyone would think he was a freak, or, even worse, pity him. he just felt so helpless - everyone else was healing, everyone else was feeling, but he felt like he was covered in open wounds and bleeding out on the street. he thought once more of the house on neibolt street, about the fear that pennywise had truly capatalised upon - his fear of being alone. his fear of going missing and no one, not even the other Losers, giving a shit. his fear of losing the only person who tolerated him. his fear of the unknown. he was so _afraid,_ so goddamn scared of everything and he hated it more than he could say.

it was after not long of sitting on that rock, thinking like such, that he began to cry. and that? well, it was almost like opening a floodgate. for as soon as he began to cry, every last thing he had repressed came rushing towards him - it surrounded him like darkness, shrouded him in his own fear. it whispered to him like the voice of a clown had before but it was almost worst this time, knowing that it was not It with a capital I, it was simply him. his own brain was doing this to him and he didn’t know how to stop himself, didn’t know if he could. richie felt like he was stuck in a loop that he might never get out of.

and then… then something had changed. looking like an angel, shrouded in light (richie would never say it aloud, but those were his thoughts every time he saw stan), out of the trees stepped stanley uris and richie felt for a moment like a character in a romance novel, about to be sweeped of his feet, and then reality came in and reminded him that this was fucking _stan_ in front of him and _shit,_ his plan had probably already been ruined and he fucking _hated_ himself, _goddamnit richie, why can’t you do anything right_ , he said to himself, feeling himself getting stuck in another goddamn loop like he always did but it seemed harder to pull himself out of, harder to handle, because this time it was just _i fucking hate myself_ reverberating seemingly across the canyon walls over and over again and he was shocked when he felt a warm, heavy weight but an end to those thoughts. to his surprise, as he’d been in his own head (like always, trashmouth tozier these days was less of that and more traumatised tozier), stan had made his way over and decided that the best, or only, course of action was to hug him - richie wasn’t complaining, but it did seem odd, considering everything that had gone down between them (read : absolutely nothing), but richie found himself glad that stanley was here instead of anyone else. he realised all too quickly that he needed to say something, pretend like he wasn’t crying, or just do _something_ to prove that he wasn’t enjoying this as much as he was and that he didn’t kind of need physical contact to ground him.

without shrugging of stan’s arm as he usually might’ve, richie tried to muster up his usual grin and pushed his glasses up, silently cursing himself a moment later as he realised that everyone knew he did that when he was nervous, and looked over at stan who, to his surprise, was already looking intently at his face. richie wished he would look away. it would make _this,_ lying to him, that much easier.

“while you know i appreciate the physical contact, though you should pass on the message that i’d rather it from your mother, to what do i owe the pleasure, stanny boy?” he said. it wasn’t what it usually would’ve been - he could usually think of a thousand better comebacks on a moment’s notice - it was the best he could do for the moment. instead of his usual eye roll, though, stan just looked back at him in the intense way that had bothered him before. _dammit_ , richie thought, glancing up again before defiantly turning his head away from the curly haired boy, hating how his eyes stayed fixed on his face. richie hated people looking at his face, especially like _that_ , because he hated his face and he knew if someone was to look at it, really look, they would too. but, casting his eyes towards stan, he could tell that was not what was going through his mind at all, though what it truly was evaded him. it made richie shifty, almost anxious, the weight held in that intense stare of his, all of that focus directed at him to the point where he had no idea what to do with it. he wanted to _do_ something. as nice as it felt, sitting on the rocks grounded by stanley’s sweater clad arm around his shoulder, he felt like he might start crying again. he _couldn’t_ start crying, not in front of stan, not again. it wasn’t that he was ashamed of himself, per say, though he couldn’t really think of a better adjective. it was just that this was stan and he was richie and for fuck’s sake, richie really didn’t know why nothing could just be simple, why there had to be killer clowns that felt on par with his fucking teenage angst and boy problems, because that was all they were. stupid teenage boys with their stupid pretty faces and curly hair and tiny shoulders and shaky voices. stupid teenage boys with their fucking bravery in the face of their worst nightmares and undeserved fucking inferiority complexes (richie wished stan had a superiority complex, because he secretly didn’t think he would be quite incorrect). he hated feeling so helpless when he’d killed a clown with a baseball bat and the other Loser’s help for his best friend, he’d faced off with his fears, seen himself, missing and later dead, watched stanley almost get his face eaten and eddie face off with a terrifying leper and yet he still cried because he felt worthless and stupid and confused about his feelings for a certain cute boy who had his arms around his shoulders at that very moment.

“goddammit,” richie muttered, feeling tears well up in his eyes once more. “god _dammit,_ ” he repeated, louder this time, pushing his hands through his hair like he had something to prove.

“what is it, rich?” asked stan, all soft eyes and soft curls and soft skin and richie wanted to punch that punk in his goddamn pretty face for being too much and too close yet simultaneously not close enough.

richie let out a dry laugh, or at least tried to. it came out sounding more like a choked up sob. “don’t worry about it!” he said, mustering what enthusiasm he could. “absolutely nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! this is jus the first chapter but im trying my hand at IT fic bcs i loved the movie So Much tho i have issues with the book. they're like my age in this fic? ish idk they're sophomores bcs i think it was the summer after their freshman year in the movie when it all happened, idk. thanks again!! comments would be appreciated like... more than anything  
> also... damn i reread this and edited it but like... wow. whatta fuckup


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more thinking. more of this fic being long and rambly. all 3rd person limited POV : stan. its a little short but i hope u enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING : suicide mentions and small descriptions - stan is describing his nightmares of losing his friends and he briefly describes bill and richie killing themselves, though it doesn't actually take place in the fic. the paragraph with the *CW* before and after it should be avoided if this a trigger for you, it's not an extremely important paragraph, just going deeper into the anxieties and nightmares stan is having.

there was nothing stan wished for more in that moment than for richie to, just once, not be Trashmouth The Trash. _but, of course_ , he thought somewhat vindictively, _that was too big of a feat for fucking bigmouth._ in his head, drowning out the real richie if only for a moment, the lyrics to bigmouth strikes again by the smiths played. _bigmouth, bigmouth/ bigmouth strikes again/ and i’ve got no right to take my place/ with the human race…_ of course, not that that was how he felt about richie. while he would admit that he wasn’t quite sure what was going on on that front, he kind of thought that richie was amazing, or really fucking cool at the very least. he just wished that for _once,_ bigmouth would stop fucking talking about nothing and admit that not everything was okay. stan felt almost hypocritical, thinking those words, knowing that he hid away his heart maybe even more than the boy beside him did, but that wasn’t what he was supposed to be focusing on, g-ddammit.

“... and then she called me a fucking bitch and all that and _god help me_ i wanted to punch her in the fucking face right then and there - say, stanny boy, got any smokes?” stan tuned back in just in time to hear this and shake his head. he’d only tried smoking once, and it tasted bad and felt worse, plus it made him look even more like a nerd trying to be cool than his whole pressed clothing and headphones pushed down over curly hair _look_ already did. richie, on the other hand, couldn’t stop. stan wasn’t quite sure why he did it - every time someone told him that they didn’t have any smokes on them, which happened almost all of the time now that bev wasn’t around to charm cashiers and get a group of 15 year olds a pack of cigs, he looked almost relieved. stanley wasn’t sure he was supposed to notice that. he’d been noticing a lot of things about richie, recently, that he didn’t see in anyone else. the way his eyebrows furrowed when he looked at ben sometimes, in a way that looked almost like… jealousy, or contempt of some sort, or _something._

despite everything, richie really wasn’t the easiest person to read - he was an open book until you tried to take a pencil to his pages when you find that they were highlight proof, as weird a metaphor as that was. stan felt like he was betraying his best friend a bit when he, too, thought the way he imagined richie did sometimes. it was just that, at times, stan would see richie step up to the plate and take responsibility and he felt like he should be shocked (but wasn’t) how richie handled everything like he was made for that. _born to lead_ was a term he’d heard used about bill often; despite it all, how shy and stuttering he could be, bill radiated and odd type of energy that made people want to follow him. stan resented that, sometimes; he could never do that. he never would. and he was pretty sure richie felt the exact same way.

but richie, while stan didn’t understand his motivations some (most, if he was to be honest) of the time, was really stan's rock or something like that (was there a less cheesy term for it? he was that.) and seeing him not be who he’d convinced everyone he was had shaken stan a little bit, to the point where he was sure it had been noticeable. that was probably, he thought back, regretting his lack of acting skills, the reason richie had so immediately closed off and hidden from him. of course, richie would do that in any situation, but richie had taken just one look at his face and then immediately wipe himself of any emotion that he wasn’t “supposed” to be feeling. he was their rock so, in his mind, he couldn’t be anything other than this display, this caricature he’d created to fit what he thought they wanted from him. stanley knew that somewhere, if not everywhere, they’d encouraged that vision; they all were characters, really, stuck in these people that they’d used to cope that none of them knew if they could keep up anymore.

*Content Warning : Suicide*

stan was almost jealous of beverly, really - she’d been there, lived her life, defeated fucking pennywise, and then left. no repercussions. no healing her friends when they refused to accept what needed healing. none of the really hard part. all of the scars but none of the nursing - he almost found this to be the worst part. not only his nightmares of himself - that woman coming after him again, all of his friends leaving him (a voice in his head still whispered, day in day out, that _he wasn’t wanted._ that _if they really cared they would have found him, wouldn’t have left him with these scars that none of them had_. that _they couldn’t give less of a shit about him._ _seventh wheel. not even cool enough to be a loser._ ) - but also his nightmares of his friends, infinitely more scary because they were all stuck at a stalemate, scared of themselves and scared for each other and he had no idea how he could help them. as he fell asleep each night little realities flashed through his head like they were home videos. richie, hanging with a note signed his name pinned to his chest. bill, his wrists opened, a paper boat floating beside him. _(you’ll float too oh G-d you’ll float too)_. more, too gruesome to describe.

*Warning Over*

the truth was, stan was terrified. terrified enough to get caught up in his thoughts for what felt like forever, terrified enough to visibly show emotion, terrified enough to not even notice when bigmouth stopped talking and instead stared at his lap with an intensity that made stan think he was going to cry again and G-d, he was not prepared for that. stan glanced up and around him and realised that it was getting darker by the moment - he’d forgotten about how early the night fell these days, coating the town like paint by early evening, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. it was almost nice, sitting in the slowly darkening gorge with a silent richie, and he felt selfish for thinking that there was no one he’d rather be there with. _of course,_ he scolded himself, _you’d rather richie wasn’t dealing with shit you don’t know about that there’s no way on earth he’ll explain to you, you’d rather you weren’t freaking out about losing yourself and your friends, you’d rather…_ but he really, _really_ could not bring himself to feel the contempt for himself that he usually would over it on that evening. he had so much to think about, _so_ many things on his mind at once, he couldn’t even bring himself to hate himself for his personality.

stan glanced over at richie and was surprised by what he saw. beside him, richie, had taken his glasses off and was looking out, far away, leaning slightly into the arm stan still had over his shoulders. he looked softer than usual, less like _Richie Tozier,_ capital letters and all, and more like stan’s secret pet name for him, rich, more like home with the light of the setting sun no longer reflecting off his glasses and instead warming his face. stan had the odd urge to reach out to him, to touch him even more than he was with the sides of their bodies pressed together. he let himself imagine it, for a second - richie turning his head towards him, stan placing a hand on the freckled skin of the other boy’s neck and maybe stroking his thumb from the top of his perfect cheekbone to his jaw - but he’d never have the courage to do anything like that. he tried to convince himself that he wasn’t even sure if he wanted that, though somewhere in him, he knew that you couldn’t spend as much time as he did imagining his hands through richie’s soft, thick, almost black hair and not want to do it, at least the littlest bit. he hoped it was the littlest bit, though he suspected that his feelings ran deeper than he wanted to think about.

for all his being caught up in rich, in all of his beauty, stan was ridiculously unobservant and didn’t realise that he was staring at richie’s face until their eyes met and he looked down at his feet, embarrassed and waited to feel richie pull away, at least the littlest bit, from the grounding power of stanley’s arm, but it never happened. instead, he leaned almost imperceptibly further into the small boy and stared out once more as stan did the same, a silent understanding passing between them. _later. soon._ they would talk, eventually, but not then. for that moment, the two of them had so many thoughts it was probably better that they simply sat there, gazing across a canyon in the only type of silence they could have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! comment or do the whatever u do on ao3 if u enjoyed!! also i made a bit of a playlist for this fic just like music i've been listening to as i write it and that is here : https://open.spotify.com/user/teresa.fg/playlist/0a7jOEmYYHBMXMIPaYtbKT


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> even MORE thinking! woohoo. basically what happened in the last chapter but what was going on in richie's mind. i PROMISE something will happen, though whether it's soon or eventually is TBD. and something is a wide margin including anything more than what has happened thus far so like. one full conversation. someone moving in a dynamic way or for more than like 10 ft. anything outside of thier brains. all 3rd person limited : richie. enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING : the Q slur is used multiple times here (im a lesbian!! i can reclaim it but i dont most of the time), as a taunt against richie and a word he uses to refer to himself.  
> there are also mentions of other period typical homophobia, though it's not graphic.  
> also a small scene that is about stan dying but it's just richie's imagination, it doesn't actually happen but there is a little bit of i guess you could consider it body horror?  
> stay safe! if u wanna read this but any of that stuff triggers u i can give u a version where it's edited out/notify u abt where it is specifically.

richie had no idea what he was saying. sure, he had a vague idea of what was coming out of his mouth - some story of what had happened on monday, the boring day to day of his life, but the words tasted stale and untruthful on his tongue. in reality, his mind was racing with thoughts of a different kind. he was thinking about stan, with his pretty golden hair falling a bit into his eyes, but that was somehow intercut with images of It. the things It had said to him, the dreams he’d had since, things he didn’t even want to think about…

suddenly, it all felt like too much. again, that was. stan’s arm around him turned into a coffin in his mind and he heard pennywise’s voice in his bedroom late at night, telling him that god hated… guys like him, but he’d fit right in with It. _you’ll float too,_ richie heard ringing through his ears just as he had that night. _you’ll float too and there’ll be plenty of pretty guys to kiss ‘till you’re blue if you come float with us!_ he’d heard a thousand tiny laughs at that, burying his head in his hands and shrinking away from the clown’s form. _queers like you, ‘till you’re blue, you’ll float too!_ over and over in his head, that night and past. it still played in his mind now, months after It had been defeated. he still heard them as he fell asleep, as the kids who’d taken henry bowers’s place shoved him into the lockers and such, calling him the same words pennywise had and spitting on his cheek, laughing as they walked away. it was then, standing up, wiping spit from his cheek and gathering all his shit again that he heard them most clearly, like they were surrounding him. _‘till you’re blue!_ he shook his head minutely and glanced at stan, the familiar sight of his ironed clothes and vaguely crinkled brow, not listening to a word richie said comforted him slightly, but he could still feel it all pressing in on him, getting so much closer now…

“say, stanny boy, got any smokes?” he asked, cutting himself off in the middle of whatever story he’d been telling. the far away taste of cigarettes on his tongue reminded him of comfort and calamity, something he could use a bit more of in that moment. when stan shook his head no, richie was not surprised and was even a bit thankful. every time he felt this way (almost all the time), he thought a cig would make it better but it almost never did and it made his clothes smell like them even after he washed them. not like his parents gave a shit, but eddie had expressed multiple times how much he hated it and richie got the feeling stan wasn’t such a big fan either, so he tried to set aside some clothes to keep clean for when he knew he’d be around either of the two. secretly, he wished somewhat childishly that he could wear his ‘clean clothes : stan edition’ set more often, but he knew that stan’s justified dislike for him was just that and it wasn’t as though richie had done anything to rectify that - if anything, he spent most of his time making it worse. richie always did that with things he loved; fucked them up until their relationship was nowhere near what he’d wished it could be. hell, he’d done it with his parents. he always thought that if he could just be a little bit smarter, a little bit funnier, a little bit of a better boy, they’d love him. but alas, he had parents who couldn’t care less and a boy who he (though he wouldn’t admit it) liked a lot who he was pretty sure genuinely hated his guts, and it was truly, through and through, his fault.

so he leaned into stan a bit more ( _pretty guys… ‘till you’re blue…)_ and stared out at the rapidly setting sun, hoping, or more accurately wishing, that stan would say something to break this palpable quiet between them. instead, his mind was left to wander, wander, wander, exactly as it had been when he had come here. lightning fast, fear flashed through his mind. stan’s ribs sticking out, his waist impossibly small, small enough that the boy was breaking, breaking, breaking, stan’s skin growing too pale, pale as richie’s or eddie’s or bill’s, stan’s eyes going glassy like beverly’s had when she’d looked into the deadlights, his face, sadly stoic like mike’s was when he didn’t want them to know that he was hurting, all of the _stan_ draining out of him and for just a moment, in richie’s mind, he was lost. he felt all the places stan was touching him so acutely that he didn’t know how he could be, but it was though richie had fallen into a dream he couldn’t wake up from and stan was wasting away in front of his eyes. he would realise, later, that it wasn’t normal or healthy for 14 year old boys to hear voices and hallucinate their friends dying in front of their eyes, but in that moment, he was so paralyzed with fear that he didn’t know what to do. he couldn’t move or see or think anything but _stan._

and then it was over. as quickly as it had begun, his _attack_ or whatever one was to call it had ended. he was just richie tozier, staring out into the barrens again. no deadlights or stoic faces or pale skin, just water and stone and trees. just himself and stan and the calming feeling of someone breathing beside him.

without disturbing stan from his deep thought akin to slumber, richie softly placed his coke bottle lenses on the ledge beside him, feeling more soft and unlike himself than ever without the usual protection of his glasses, separating him from the world, even only by one small barrier. he felt like he was more present, more there with stan and he was glad of it. he wished he hadn’t put this all upon stan - of course, he hadn’t really said or done anything, but he felt bad for just being a burden upon the other boy and forcing him to deal with (or choose not to) richie’s complicated, unrequited (or so he thought) feelings for him. it was most guys in their school’s worst nightmare - a queer kid having a crush on them sounded like the perfect excuse to justify their violence. stan had never been violent, he wasn’t that type of person, but richie felt bad for putting this on him anyway, despite the fact that he was pretty sure (he hoped?) that no one, especially stan himself, had noticed the way richie felt about him.

richie was feeling vulnerable, though, so if only for a second he allowed himself to lean into stan without feeling bad about the thoughts and emotions he was harboring towards the boy and simply enjoying it. _i’m watching a sunset with my crush. how is it any different?_ he imagined ben and bev sitting here together. would ben feel bad about leaning into beverly, letting himself feel for a moment. he’d be happy for them, of course. he just wished he could be normal so they could be happy for him, too.

he couldn’t quite grasp it nonetheless. feeling proud or happy for himself had eluded him his whole life, no matter how he pretended otherwise, and allowing himself to be queer and _feel_ that way? he didn’t know how, really. he wished he could simply not think and just _be_ but he felt like an intruder, a violation with his own friends. how awful was that? he just wished he could feel easily, like bill did, or keep it under wraps, like mike, but he was stuck in this odd in between where he couldn’t _know_ and _be_ but he also couldn’t simply _not_ show that to the world. everyone had their secrets and it seemed that little trashmouth tozier couldn’t even figure out his own. _i’m a lousy friend_ , he told himself, _and god am i a shitty person._

he glanced at stan next to him, expected to see him looking troubled and tired, focused intently on nothing once more but instead he had his eyes trained on richie’s pale face, observing in a calm, comforting way. he saw a flicker of… _something_ in the other boy’s eyes but it was gone before he could truly understand it. despite that, he was content for that moment, staring into each other’s eyes, before stan embarrassedly teared his eyes away and stared at his shoes, blushing slightly. richie _wanted_ to tell him he was cute. richie _wanted_ to kiss his pinkish cheeks and giggle with him. richie wanted all sorts of things, but he simply settled for leaning in slightly and staring out at the horizon again, feeling more contented than he had before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was supposed to kinda be commentary on how as gay kids we feel like we arent allowed to experience crushes n emotion the same way others are. coming to terms with attraction is rly fucking hard and for gay kids we're raised to repress the SGA we have so much that it's hard for gay kids n teens to understand how to experience crushes and that we're not predatory!! anyway yea that was just an explanation of what i was trying to convey here!  
> leave a comment or kudos or bookmark or whatever and i hope u enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ok i swear this is the last solely introspection chapter before something else happens. i wrote this at 12:30 on a sunday night because i had a cover of the song mentioned (think for a minute by the housemartins) stuck in my head from this random irish movie i watched called handsome devil? it was p good but ANYWAY this isn't edited or very good but it's moving everything along! all 3rd person limited : stan. enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW : q slur  
> stan also like self deprecatingly says shit about all the losers but i think it's p clear it's not serious so yknow

they’d been quiet for too long. stan was stuck in his head more than usual and richie seems to be as well, but stan knew it down to his bones. something had to give.  _ something’s going on, change is taking place…  _ a song played quietly in his head, a memory from a radio or a record his parents had been listening to that he can’t quite place. he simply remembered the words and the way he’d heard them - clear, yet far away and slightly muffled. he felt almost like that to the world in that moment. removed and slightly out of focus.  _ children smiling in the street have gone without a trace _ he thought the next line might say, though it was impossible for him to be sure. how ironic that it would come to him in that moment, he thought, picturing the streets of derry without the boy beside him, who some would say haunted those streets with his awful jokes and other… eccentricities, they’d say, dancing around what they meant.

this brought stan to the thought, suddenly, of the missing poster he’d seen in the house on neibolt street, tossed onto the ground, almost thoughtless. he’d only glanced at it in their rush to make it inside, but he’d seen that face clear as day. coke bottle glasses, long, unruly hair, too-big eyes, and a grin that knew it had just told a particularly funny joke and was waiting for the response. MISSING, it had declared and for a fleeting second stan had believed it and felt the most unbelievable sense of loss, only moments before dashing in to find richie there on the floor and bev letting go of the weapon stabbed through the clown’s brain ( _ not dead not dead he’s back you’ll float too stanley you’ll float too _ ). he wondered what the town would think if they really had gone missing ( _ children smiling... gone without a trace... _ ). he imagined what they’d say before sweeping it under the rug like they’d done to georgie, to betty, to patrick. 

this brought stan to a vivid picture in his mind of the 7 of them, branded onto paper how the people of derry thought of them. what they’d say if they truly were gone. 

MISSING : stuttering bill, big bill, the other denbrough kid. 

MISSING : eddie spaghetti, sick boy, that poor kasbrek boy, sonia’s son.

MISSING : trashmouth tozier, four eyes boy, poor little richie. 

MISSING : homeschool, the farm boy, the hanlons’ (yes, the hanlon’s from the… yes, those hanlons) son. 

MISSING : new kid, haystack, the chubby kid from up the block. 

MISSING : the school slut, pixie cut marsh, the girl with all the boys (in more ways than one, they’d snicker under their breath), little bevvie with the dear dead dad. 

MISSING : him. 

stan could think of a hundred ways the people of his town would classify him but he didn’t want to imagine them in such permanence - simply hearing them every day in school was enough. he was the jew, the queer, the neat freak, the bitch boy, birdshit, a hundred other things. he knew it and it hurt that everyone else seemed to, as well.

but more importantly, something had to give. no matter how long stan could spend wasting away in his own mind, this time he had a reason to be impatient for all of that calming nothingness to pass him by. he wanted to know why it was richie was here. why he had come here, why he’d been crying, why he’d allowed stan to even come near him without comment, why he’d accepted the embrace,why he was suddenly more silent than stan had ever known him to be, even in sleep (he mumbled. stan had shared a bed with him a few times (sleepless nights) and he’d heard richie joking and acting just as he did awake under his breath most of the night). stan didn’t find himself to be invasive nor particularly invested in people’s personal matters - that wasn’t to say that he couldn’t be, if the necessity fell upon him, he would try his best to help or comfort any one of, if not all of, his friends however he could, but instead he simply did not need to know. 

for example, while he was aware of the odd dynamic that had existed between ben, bev, and bill, it had only vaguely existed to him until bill found that he wanted to talk to someone about it and, well, stanley was a perfect confidant for precisely this reason. he wasn’t invested, he had no share or stake in the issues, and he was clever and a good problem solver who genuinely wanted to help his friends. a perfect candidate for any confidences. so about the ben, bev, bill issues he’d learned and tried his best to advise on. this wasn’t to say his advice was always the wisest, but it came from a place of love for his friends and he had always used the strategy of doing his best and hoping it worked in his favour. it had only kind of, in this case. bev had kissed both ben and bill on separate occasions and their descriptions of it had… contained some discrepancies, to say the least, mostly in the way each boy had felt about it afterwards. in fact, stan had a sneaking suspicion, or let’s call it intuition, that kissing bev had been the moment bill had realised he was not into girls.

but that was not anywhere near the point, stan chided himself, wondering for the thousandth time why his brain had to go on such tangents and leave itself behind in its haste to be the only one  _ thinking.  _ this situation, unlike the other, was one in which he couldn’t allow himself to simply look at it objectively and with disinterest. instead, stan found himself using the compassion and simple passion he’d reserved for only things he hid from the world (like bird watching and reading and all sorts) to wonder and worry about richie. this wasn’t uncommon, truly - since he’d befriended the boy a long while back he’d had a vague fog of worry for richie clouding his thoughts much of the time, but that was simply  _ what stupid thing will he do next and how will i have to save him (from himself, most likely).  _ but this type of concern? this was new and unfamiliar - he was concerned about richie’s home life and his emotions in a way he so rarely allowed himself to be towards anyone, much less the annoying boy from up the road, with his glasses and hair and stupid freckles that stan had always found himself liking too much. he worried about richie and for him - he felt the stupid, instinctual urge to gather richie up into his arms like a ragdoll and hold him as close as possible, to fight all of richie’s battles and keep him safe, though richie was probably much better at that than stan ever would be. no matter how stupid he felt thinking it, though, stan wanted richie to be okay. he wanted everything in the world for the boy, g-d only knew why, and he simply hated that he couldn’t get that for him. hell, he could barely get richie to stop crying, and the fact that he had was probably because of embarrassment or discomfort.  _ g-d,  _ stan chided himself _ , why are you such a fucking bad friend? do something, for goodness’s sake! help him! do anything _ . instead, he simply sat there, staring out into the endless sky and the simple water below, hoping that richie would be the one to  _ do _ something. hoping that this wading through the shit in-between talking and silent comforting would end. hoping for anything in the world but this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so that was probably kinda hard to get thru i feel like but this is trying to set up their characters (which i'm sure i could do in a much more interesting way and i'm sure i don't even do well here) and also set up for some kinda plot! i gotta tell u guys i feel like this fic is gonna be long like... 2 things have happened in like 5000+ words but i am continuing working on it!! and still updating the playlist yo  
> https://open.spotify.com/user/teresa.fg/playlist/0a7jOEmYYHBMXMIPaYtbKT  
> edit : whoops i severely underestimated my word count it's 7000+


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> richie and stan converse. for once! at last! third person pov that kinda goes between them idk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING : the q slur is used, once, because im trying to make it vaguely time period accurate.  
> (im wlw so i can reclaim idk if i've said this before but that's why i dont use the f slur as well because yknow not my word)

“stan?” richie asked, breaking the tension that had been sitting between them as a silent third party. stan looked at richie, as if acknowledging that yes, he had spoken, and yes, stan was listening. urging him to go on. richie looked down, suddenly slightly embarrassed by what he had been hyping himself up to ask. 

“do you… y’know. do you like me?” he asked, staring at the long drop below his feet instead of the boy beside him, feeling a dark blush creep over his pale cheeks. he was glad he’d taken off his glasses, because he’d really rather not see the expression on stan’s face when he glanced up.

stan was stunned for a moment by the question, silently spluttering.  _ could he… know? _ he thought, panicked.  _ how?  _ instead of letting this show, the curly haired boy composed himself, glad richie was resolutely not looking at his face, and spoke. “like, seriously?”

richie’s mortified silence was the only answer he received, confirming the answer to his question. “of course, rich, don’t be an idiot. i love you,” he said, softer than he’d meant to. realising what he’d said, stan quickly corrected himself. “we love you, the loser’s club.”

richie still looked forlorn, though his expression had changed slightly. he looked almost  _ shocked,  _ though stan couldn’t imagine why.

“you know that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that to me?” richie said, his voice coming out unexpectedly roughly, as though he was halfway between screaming and crying. still refusing to look anywhere but at his scuffed shoes, he continued. 

“maybe my mother would if i didn’t avoid her like the plague when she’s drunk, which is all the time. maybe my father would if i was a better son. if i weren’t…” he trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence, as though that’d make it real. 

“bill never said it except to georgie, he told me. he wants to tell mike, but he feels like it’s the only thing left between him and georgie. he doesn’t, anyway. love me, that is. and maybe if the esteemed mrs. kasbrek hadn’t drilled the fear of god - or being queer, at least - into eddie, he’d’ve told all us by now. y’know. and you and mike and ben and bev are too nice to lie, because you  _ don’t _ love me,” he stated, as though it were a fact that couldn’t be disproven, looking suddenly fierce. he finally met stan’s eyes, only to say “i know you want me to feel better, but i thought we made that pact. all of us. we said we’d never lie to each other,” to richie’s horror, tears were filling his eyes quickly. 

“i thought you said you wouldn’t lie to me, stanny. i thought…” he broke off before his voice could break embarrassingly, turning his face away from his friend, hoping he wouldn’t see the tears falling onto those coke bottle glasses of his on the ground beside him. 

stan pulled his friend back into him, for about the third time that evening, stroking a hand softly against richie’s hair, whispering things he wouldn’t remember into the boy’s ear.  _ shh,  _ he thought he’d said _ it’s okay, rich. we’re not lying to you, i promise.  _ he’d promised to him, again and again. his mind was elsewhere.

stan had never known anything of richie’s home… situation. he knew bill had been over there a couple of times, only to fetch richie, but the boy wouldn’t even let the other losers bike him home.  _ it’s on our way, _ they’d say kindly, and richie would make an excuse or laugh it off and ride into the distance, solitary and silent like he wasn’t otherwise. but richie had only a moment ago said some things and… shit. stan suddenly felt bad about all the times he’d complained about his dad giving too much of a shit.  _ i’m jewish,  _ he’d said time after time.  _ i love being jewish and i really don’t mind synagogue but he makes me feel like a fucking disappointment for not knowing the entirety of the torah since birth or some shit.  _ not a day went by when stan’s mom didn’t kiss him goodnight and tell him she loved him, and here he was, being the first person to ever tell richie the same thing and not even in the way he wanted to.  _ shit,  _ he almost breathed aloud.

a hundred thousand things were racing through richie’s mind that moment, even more than usual. ranging from  _ he doesn’t love you, if he loved you he’d…  _ to  _ what if he loves you what if he really loves you what if he loves you like you love him _ . it was the first time richie had admitted to himself that he loved anyone in that way. it felt fitting. the  _ first _ time someone had said they loved him, and it was his  _ first  _ love and he realised that for the  _ first  _ time. richie foolishly thought, like some silly school girl, of all the other firsts they could have together. he blushed almost imperceptibly redder. 

“stan,” he started, not even knowing himself where he was going, knowing he had to say  _ something.  _ “listen, i, uh, appreciate everything you’ve done for me but…” he trailed off. both of them were waiting for what he’d say next. “i’d appreciate if you didn’t, y’know, talk about any of this stuff with them. the others. and, uh,” this was the first time stan had really heard richie struggling to speak simply. another first. 

“um. thanks, stan the man. for… for everything. and i, uh, i love you too,” he hesitated for half a second, hoping stan would receive the message. he didn’t appear to. “all of you guys, that is, i know i don’t say it enough, but you’re the best friends imaginable and, well, thanks. again. for being here,” he finished. richie glanced over at stan almost nervously, trying to gauge what he was feeling from the expression on his face.

stan smiled sadly over at richie in that way he’d come to hate, that way that said  _ i see through it, all of it, you know, but i’ll let you have this.  _ “yeah, richie. any time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u enjoyed!! i finally wrote something happening and wow, feels weird. but yeah i had no school today because of wildfires right near my house + school so u know burning risk also Extreme smoke in the air. sorry if this chapter sucks i was listening to the libertines and im in a weird mood. i wanna be loved!
> 
> tell me ur thoughts thanks goodnight :-)
> 
> after the fact note : yo thanks for 1k+ reads?? uh idk how this happened because i literally created a doc (still titled "Untitled Document"), wrote "stozier." at the top and a version of the description that i'd thought of like 2 seconds earlier?? i guess us stozier folks must be really in need of better content. thanks so much for everything!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not a chapter!

as yall may have guessed, this fic has been discontinued. my writing style was sloppy and essentially just consisted of large blocks of text attempting to explain what was going on in my characters' heads through way too many parentheses and it's been months since i've had any motivation to write or even read this fic. i know i have a Lot of abandoned fic but i actually still like this pairing, this movie, and these characters, so maybe i'll write something else another time. thanks for reading anyway!


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